How to design AI adoption so decision makers can say yes without self-sabotage
Lots of organizations can green-light AI. Far fewer can absorb it. That gap, between excitement and real, embedded use, keeps showing up even when ROI is compelling and leadership is visibly supportive. New research from D^3 Frontier Firm affiliate Shunyuan Zhang and Das Narayandas reveals an uncomfortable idea contributing to this gap. In “Selling Self-Disruptive Technologies: Identity-Compatible Advantage and the Role-Level Microfoundations of Automation Adoption,” they highlight that the very people who must approve and champion these technologies are the same ones whose jobs could be fundamentally threatened by them.
Key Insight: The Three Threats of Self-Disruptive Technologies (SDTs)
“We define SDTs as innovations that simultaneously (1) improve organizational performance and (2) erode the authority, discretion, or legitimacy of the role responsible for approving them.” [1]
Traditional adoption theories typically focus on whether organizations are ready, whether the technology is useful, and whether there’s institutional pressure to adopt. But these frameworks miss something critical: they assume decision-makers are neutral agents acting on behalf of the firm. Now, add to the mix AI systems with the potential to automate managerial judgment, analytics platforms that centralize decision rights, or algorithmic tools that replace experiential expertise with codified models. When the manager in charge of approving these technologies anticipates that they will shrink their own role or reduce their influence, the approval decision becomes identity-laden. These Self-Disruptive Technologies, as Narayandas and Zhang call them, trigger three forms of role-level identity threat. Role compression occurs when automation shifts core work from “deciding” to “monitoring,” compressing the judgment and expertise that defines a role’s distinctive contribution. Control shift happens when discretion moves away from the approving role (e.g. centralized to analytics teams or delegated to algorithms), removing the decision authority that makes roles defensible within organizations. Span erosion reflects the contraction of influence over people, budgets, or processes, undermining status and future opportunity even when the formal position remains intact.
What makes these threats particularly powerful is that they can dominate the approval calculus even when firm-level incentives favor adoption and economic cases are strong. A manufacturing supervisor might support efficiency improvements in principle but resist when the technology eliminates the judgment calls that justify their expertise. A procurement manager might delay adopting an AI tool that demonstrably reduces costs because it centralizes decisions that previously sustained their organizational influence
Key Insight: Engineering the Solution – Identity-Compatible Advantage (ICA)
“Identity-Compatible Advantage therefore does not operate by increasing perceived value or shifting bargaining power, but by enabling approvers to say yes without identity loss.” [2]
Here’s where the research gets actionable. Narayandas and Zhang argue for an approach of Identity-Compatible Advantage to require bundling new technology with governance and role-design mechanisms that make adoption personally and politically defensible for managers. ICA includes five complementary elements: role rechartering that redefines the role around higher-order judgment rather than routine decisions; decision guardrails that preserve authority through override rights and and governance structures; analytical overlays that frame technology as augmentative rather than substitutive; redeployment pathways that provide credible commitments to role evolution rather than elimination; and executive sponsorship that legitimizes identity transition and reallocates accountability.
The research emphasizes that these mechanisms work as a bundle, not in isolation. For example, implementing guardrails without rechartering leaves meaning unaddressed, as you give the manager the power to override the AI (restoring some control), but because the AI still does the core work, the manager feels their daily expertise is useless (leaving their loss of purpose and contribution unaddressed). The framework shows that successful SDT adoption requires designing offerings where endorsement becomes personally and politically defensible.
Why This Matters
Most AI automation discourse has fixated on individual contributors like programmers, graphic designers, and copywriters because their work products are visible and the substitution story is easy to tell. This research adds a missing piece: the managers and decision-makers, who control whether AI technologies get adopted in the first place, are themselves facing automation of their core judgment and authority. For executives and business leaders, the implications are profound. If you treat AI adoption as a purely rational calculation, you are likely to be met with “symbolic adoption,” where your team pays lip service to innovation while quietly ensuring that the status quo remains undisturbed. By utilizing Identity-Compatible Advantage, leaders can implement the complex undertaking of AI adoption as an evolution of their teams, not a replacement of them. The future of work belongs to the firms that can successfully re-anchor identities around high-level strategy, risk ownership, and the human-centric decisions that no machine can replicate.
Bonus
The path to real AI adoption runs through design choices: how you frame AI, where you keep humans in the loop, and how you protect legitimacy. For another look at the dynamics of AI in the workplace, check out Drawing the Line on AI Usage in the Workplace.
References
[1] Narayandas, Das and Shunyuan Zhang, “Selling Self-Disruptive Technologies: Identity-Compatible Advantage and the Role-Level Microfoundations of Automation Adoption.” Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 26-050 (February 9, 2026): 5. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6203438
[2] Narayandas and Zhang, “Selling Self-Disruptive Technologies,” 9.
Meet the Authors
Das Narayandas is Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
Shunyuan Zhang is Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. She and other HBS faculty contribute to the D^3 Frontier Firm Initiative.